A Czech animated fantasy directed by Karel Zeman.
Sinbad the sailor has many adventures as he sails from kingdom to kingdom and outwits danger after danger.
I really liked this. The animation style was unique, somewhere between Lotte Reiniger's paper cutouts and "standard" hand drawn cell animation. The plot seemed like a series of vignettes because it was originally released as a series of shorts, each including a single adventure. There were some inconsistencies, like calling birds that look the same doves and then seagulls later, but I don't really want to get into that here. I just want to say how good it was. The pacing was dynamic and the characters and backgrounds all looked amazing. I would recommend it if you don't mind fast paced subtitles, not as fast as Night is Short, Walk On Girl (2017), but be ready to read pretty quickly. I rate this awesome.
A Japanese animation directed by Eiichi Yamamoto.
A young water seller in Baghdad falls in love with a slave woman in a market. When he can't pay for her, a dust storm disrupts the procedings and he steals the woman, setting off a seemingly endless chain of events.
Such style! Being the first X rated cartoon ever made and Japanese, I had a feeling that it would be good. The plot was epic and characters memorable. The pacing kept time with events, slowing down and speeding up accordingly. The animation did not look like stereotypical anime because that style was not yet developed in 1969. It looked more like American animation styles, with some unique twists thrown in. Who would think of using live action shots in the middle of a cartoon? So unique! The soundtrack was mostly psychedelic rock, which I liked and found fitting for the time period. This is about as lewd and crude as Fritz the Cat. Animated boobs and butts cannot be counted, but there are no depictions of genitalia or penetration. All of the sex is implied, but there is a rape scene. Aladdin is seen smoking a cigar and getting drunk and there is a nobleman who gets high on his own handmade designer drugs. This noble's son eats something that he calls cordial as an aphrodisiac that makes him blow orange smoke from his nose. Some of the more violent scenes were a torture scene with badly timed screams and a fight between a triclops and a roc. I'm rating this best. It is a must see!
